Jonathon Rea had a much more positive outing, qualifying in 9th and converting that into a 5th place finish in Race 1 and 7th in the Sprint Race. The weekend ended earlier than he would have liked with a mechanical DNF forcing him to pull out after 16 laps of Race 2 but even though he only finished two races, his 14-point haul was more than the combined total the BMW team were able to amass. GoEleven Ducati’ s Lorenzo Baldassarri was another rider looking to regain some form after two disappointing rounds and for the most part, he was probably satisfied with the outcome. 6th in qualifying converted to 6th in Race 1 and the Sprint race, although he fell back in Race 2 to finish 8th. Balda’ s challenge seems to be race starts as he generally loses places off the line. If he can improve on that, we’ d likely see him mixing it in the top five more often.
HONDA In the Honda HRC camp, six-times times WorldSBK champion Jonathan Rea, fresh from victory at the Suzuka 8 Hour, was a wild card entry for the weekend and with regular riders Somkiat Chantra and Jake Dixon unable to score points, it was Rea who provided a little cheer with points scoring finishes in the Sprint Race and Race 2 after a mechanical DNF in Race 1. Whilst Endurance is a very different discipline to WorldSBK, it is perplexing that Honda performed so well at Suzuka and yet so poorly in WorldSBK on a bike with so much shared DNA. The absence of Ducati and Bimota from EWC is a factor and Rea did acknowledge that the bike seems to work better, for him at least, on the Bridgestone tyres they were running at Suzuka compared to the series-mandated Pirelli’ s used in WorldSBK. It’ s not clear if we’ ll see Rea back for another
KIWI RIDER 95